Mar 15, 2010

Thinking on the portentous date this commentary is posted, my ponderings gravitated naturally toward Julius Caesar's fate. The Roman dictator was, of course, assassinated by those closest to him on March 15, 44 B.C., after having been forewarned, according to Shakespeare's literary treatment of the story, to "beware the Ides of March."

Remembering Caesar and the reasons for his murder made me think of God's prophetic Word on the future Caesar of the revived Roman Empire. He will be planet earth's final tyrant - the Antichrist. We have considered in these columns many times the movement toward his biblically predicted ascension to power. That movement continues in many areas of today's world, both major developments and the less conspicuous.

RaptureReady.com consistently presents news and commentary on the on-rushing geopolitical flood of major issues and events - most of which, we are convinced, involve Antichrist's ultimately assuming power. We monitor, for example, the European Union (EU) reconfiguring to become the nucleus of the revived Roman Empire out of which will develop the ten-toe kingdom of Daniel chapter 2 and Revelation 17:12-13; the global socioeconomic pressures forcing all nations into a new world order that the future tyrant will one day control with an iron fist; and Israel's being pressured by the nations of the world to make a false peace with its blood-vowed enemies, some of whom openly proclaim they want the Jewish state erased from off the earth.

When we move from such major issues, we dissect news at the next tier down. We examine the infrastructure of the major prophecies for news of developments we sense might make Antichrist's regime possible. For example, we explore technological developments, such as analyzed in my most previous Nearing Midnight commentary, "Big Brotherism," about the surveillance machinery that threatens liberty at many levels.

So, in that vein, when considering the Ides of March, tyrants, and the approaching time of Antichrist, the focus of this week's commentary leaped at me. The serious intention by two well-known senators, one a Democrat and one a Republican, to bring into federal law a major step toward increasing government's intrusive control over "we the people" grabbed my attention.

The legislative move, of course, is portrayed as something to solve a problem and benefit the American people. It is being considered in the name of solving the illegal alien problem.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker....

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work.... The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens. (Laura Meckler, "Source: ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan," Dow Jones & Co., Rapture Ready News, 3/9/10).

Even the left-wing organization usually in favor of ever-expanding government (at least as concerns more social programs), the ACLU, sees the dangers of such intrusion by the Federal government. Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, weighed in. "It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," he said. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American [and] treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

He is right. Proposal of such a card brings forth the ominous feeling that somewhere down the line we as Americans might be hearing the words often heard in movies about Hitler's Germany: "Show me your papers." His warning of things to come echoes within the spiritually attuned senses. It's not unlike Julius Caesar being told, "Beware the Ides of March."